FRYAR AND BRIMSTONE IRVING FRYAR, A FORMER HELL-RAISER, HAS FOUND HEAVEN AS A PREACHER AND A WIDEOUT IN MIAMI

Since Friday, Irving Fryar had not eaten. He had abstained fromsex. He had barely slept. He had gone over and over the plan,visualizing his opponent, focusing. He had wanted this so badly,ever since that afternoon when he went up the middle and wasknocked off his feet and his head hit the ground and he startedbabbling incoherently. Now it would be him standing there,waiting for someone else to come up the middle. On Sunday herose and dressed without a word. By 3:45 the fans were out, theseats were full. And then, for 60 minutes, he burst, darted,jumped, spun, went left, leaned right, screamed above the noise,waved his arms, clenched his fists and doubled over in pain. His200 pounds had a film of sweat over them, soaking the towel hekept by his side. When he scored his points, he raised his handsabove his head and stamped his feet and bent his neck all theway back until it seemed sure to snap.

Finally, on that baked afternoon at the Hopewell MissionaryBaptist Church in Pompano Beach, Fla., someone came up themiddle aisle. Michael Robinson, 37, full of doubts and crack,staggered up with tears in his eyes, trying to make it on hisown but having to lean on the burly shoulder of the usher. Thepeople waving the fans in front of their faces turned to get abetter look. And there was Fryar, standing in a robe, his sermonagainst the Devil still rattling the church's rafters, his bodypulsing, his huge hands out and open, waiting to see if Robinsonwould go all the way.

Maybe God knows a good comeback story when He hears one. IrvingFryar, the All-Pro screwup, the Original Sinner, the HumanIncident, saving somebody else's soul? The same guy who, when heplayed for the New England Patriots, would disappear for days oncocaine binges? The prodigal No. 1 son of the 1984 draft, whoonce got sideswiped by a reckless tree during the third quarterof a game? The man who was pulled over for carrying a rifleloaded with hollow points and was caught with a pistol jammeddown his boot during a bar brawl? That Irving Fryar? A redeemer?

"He's the most amazing man in my life," his wife, Jacqui, hassaid, "because I know how far he's come."

Depends on how you look at it. Fryar grew up less than two firstdowns from a Baptist church in Mount Holly, N.J. His father,David, sang with a traveling gospel group; his two sisters,Faith and Hope, sang in the church choir; and his mother,Allene, was devoted to Jesus. That's how it was in their littlehouse: Faith, Hope and Irving. He was supposed to have beenHope, and Hope was supposed to have been Charity, but he crossedup his mother right from the start, and she ended up calling himIrving, which is not a name you want if you're a gangbanger in abare-knuckle town like Mount Holly. "Sometimes I think my mothernamed me that 'cause she was mad at me for not being a girl,"Fryar says.

Oiving, kids would call him, as if he were a blackeight-year-old rabbi. Or they would string it out:Errrrrrrrrrving! Time to come home and practice the cello! Namea kid Irving in a place like Mount Holly, and you'd better throwin boxing lessons. And if the name didn't teach Irving to swingaway, his father would. David, son of a North Carolinasharecropper, lived with his family, but not often. When he didcome home from working both day (at a pipe foundry) and night(delivering for the family-owned dry-cleaning business), he wasusually drunk or mad or both. Irving would wade into the middleas his dad hit his mom, and he would get only a split lip forhis troubles. "I thought that's how all families were," he saysnow. "I never thought anything was wrong with mine."

But rage is like a river. It has to go somewhere. So Irvingwould take it to the gang they called G-town (for Ghetto Town),a pack of steel-jawed jocks with too much time on their fists:Bones and Ace and Jinx and Moose and Wimpy. Irving was calledSwift, and Swift could whip almost anybody using only hiscartoon-sized hands and quick feet and maybe a LouisvilleSlugger. No guns in those days. No drive-bys. Closest thing to adrive-by was a fly-by the night Irving got a guy airborne,throwing him through the window at Sal's Pizzeria.

Swift could also take that rage to the football field and whipalmost anybody there, too. "There wasn't anything that kidcouldn't do," says Bill Gordon, who was Fryar's football coachat Rancocas Valley Regional High. "He could play any positionbeautifully. I should've let him play quarterback. Stupid me, Ididn't."

Instead Fryar played tight end and wide receiver. And what heplayed maybe even better was centerfield. He did that so wellthat the Philadelphia Phillies scouted him, only he didn't findout about it until he was a year into his full-ride footballscholarship at Nebraska, and the Phillies had lost interest."I'd have played baseball if I'd known," Fryar says forlornly."I never knew till it was too late."

At Nebraska, Fryar, now strictly a wideout, was a cog in maybethe best Cornhusker offense ever: tailback Mike Rozier,quarterback Turner Gill and a national championship if not for aone-point loss to Miami in the 1984 Orange Bowl. At Nebraska,Fryar also got a head start on one of the longest police recordsin football. He broke down the door to the apartment of hisgirlfriend, Martha Florence, and, according to Florence, beather. "He had such a temper," remembers Florence. "He had thesetwo Dobermans, and he'd get angry at them and just fling themagainst the wall. I think he underestimated how much pressurewould be on him playing college football."

He has admitted that he used cocaine in college; Florence saysFryar got high the night before that '84 Orange Bowl. Andaccording to the book Big Red Confidential: Inside NebraskaFootball, by Armen Keteyian, Fryar deliberately dropped a passin the Orange Bowl to throw the game. (No charges were everfiled in the matter.)

The spotlight just got hotter, and life just got worse for Fryarin New England, after the Patriots made him the first pick inthe entire draft. Footballwise, Fryar with the Patriots was likeMeryl Streep at the Lubbock Summer Playhouse. New England hadgot itself the perfect receiver but neglected to find anybodywho could actually get him the ball. In his nine seasons withthe Patriots, Fryar went through nine quarterbacks. Ten bonuspoints for every one you've heard of: Tom Hodson, Tom Ramsey,Scott Zolak, Jeff Carlson, Hugh Millen, Marc Wilson, SteveGrogan, Tony Eason and Doug Flutie, whom Fryar's agent calledthe Midget. "It wasn't any use," Fryar sighs. "The ball justwasn't going to get there." He made the Pro Bowl only once--as akick returner. He had five winning seasons. The Patriots didn'tmake the playoffs his last six years.

The rest was just a dumpster full of losing and lies. The liesstarted with a beaut. Four nights before the Patriots became themost unlikely team ever to earn a spot in the Super Bowl, inJanuary 1986, Fryar told trainers that he had severed a tendonin his right little finger while working in his kitchen. Thetrainers looked at the cut and said Fryar would be lucky to playin the AFC championship game. But the Boston Globe reportedanother explanation for the injury: Irving had been fightingwith Jacqui, a former cheerleader for the Boston Breakers of theU.S. Football League, whom he had married about a year earlier.He had taken Jacqui to a posh Boston restaurant and told herthat if the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl, he didn't wanther to go with him. She became enraged, and as their argumentescalated in the restaurant's parking lot, she took a knife outof her purse and stabbed at him. He blocked the knife with hishand. (Fryar vehemently denies this version of events, concedingthat he was fighting with Jacqui that night but insisting thatthey were at home and that he cut himself.) Fryar ultimatelyplayed in the Patriots' 46-10 Super Bowl loss to the ChicagoBears--New England's finest moment--and he scored the Pats' onlytouchdown.

Two days after the Super Bowl it was revealed that Fryar, alongwith five teammates, had used illegal drugs during the season.The Globe reported that the players had been at an all-nightdrug party in Miami after a loss to the Dolphins. "I know I wasdirty," Fryar preaches now. "I know I was filled with drugs,filled with lies, filled with alcohol."

His guns he filled with hollow-point bullets. Police found arifle loaded with hollow points when they stopped Fryar, who wasdriving with a suspended license, outside Pemberton, N.J., in1988, and it hit the papers. "It wasn't so much New Jersey whereI needed it," Fryar says of the weapon. "It was Boston." It wasin Boston the year before that Fryar told police he had beenrobbed outside a jewelry store and had given chase to hisassailants, who allegedly fired at him. Police combed thevicinity and never found a spent bullet, and nobody in the areahad seen or heard anything.

Then there was the time in 1986 that Fryar left the field withan injury during a home game against the Buffalo Bills, butinstead of returning to the sidelines after treatment, he gotinto his car and drove away. Not long afterward the car hit atree, and Fryar told police it was because he had been talkingon his cellular phone and not watching where he was going.

There was more: An old acquaintance of Jacqui's, Glenn Hill,said Irving punched him in the lobby of a Boston hotel in 1986.("She was pregnant," says Fryar, "and he came up and said shelooked as big as a house!") A judge cleared Fryar of charges inthe incident.

After a while nobody trusted Fryar, and Fryar trusted nobody. Hebegan to hate going out, hate the sunlight and the spotlight.He would disappear for a couple of days at a time, snorting cokeand playing poker with his friends. Jacqui couldn't get him tostop using, but she could at least make sure he did it outsidethe house. He was just like his father, who drank on the couchin front of the TV until his wife made him leave. Irving wouldfeel remorse and finally come home. There were days when hewould say to himself, "Man, I'm going to wind up just like myold man. Going to die by myself. My kids not liking me."

There were times when he wished he were dead already. He wouldwake up some days and pray, "God, why did you wake me up thismorning?"

"I have a name for those years," he says. "The Mess."

Which is why it's hard to believe a newborn baby finally pulledhim out of it.

Adrianne Fryar was born on April 22, 1990, with two holes in herheart, a valve missing and two arteries unconnected. Not onlythat, but just before Adrianne's first operation, at age twoweeks, Jacqui found blood in the baby's diaper, which meantAdrianne had to have part of her bowel removed before she couldhave open-heart surgery. It's funny. Irving could float in andout of 11 men, jump three feet to catch a ball going 50 milesper hour and land one inch inbounds on his tippytoes, and thislittle girl couldn't even make her heart beat without trouble.Kind of changes your idea of mess.

At one point in Adrianne's two months in the hospital, doctorsused tubes that bypassed her vocal cords, which had the peculiareffect of creating a baby who cried bloody murder without makinga sound. Yeah, her dad could relate to that. Silent screaming.

For once Irving had somewhere to look other than at himself. Hislife started changing. He kept clean. He did not do drugs. Hedid not drink. It looked like Adrianne might make it. Finally,one evening in October 1990, Irving decided to give himself aone-night leave and go to Club Shalimar in Providence withteammate Hart Lee Dykes. A little after 1 a.m., Dykes startedarguing with some bar patrons about the Patriots, or maybe theystarted arguing with him, and he ended up in a fight with fiveof them outside the club. When they started beating Dykes with apair of crutches, Fryar went to his car, got his Smith & Wessonpistol, put it in his boot and returned to rescue his teammate.He found Dykes lying on the pavement, and when he knelt down tocheck on him, somebody hit Fryar on the head with a baseballbat. Karma.

When the police arrived they arrested Fryar for carrying apistol without a Rhode Island permit. He spent the night injail. The charge was later dropped because Fryar'sMassachusetts license covered Rhode Island. "Basically I wasarrested for saving Hart Lee's life," he says now.

Fryar's life officially hit bottom that night, when nobody cameto get him out of jail, and he kept bleeding from the blow tohis head, much to nobody's interest. The cops came in and gothis autograph, but they took their own good time findingsomebody to sew him up. Finally, the next morning, they gotaround to it. It was around eight. Stitches, that is.

Fryar was as miserable and alone as a millionaire could be. Heconsidered retiring. More than once. He considered suicide."Here I was, a guy who was supposed to have everything in theworld, and I had nothing," he says. "No peace. No joy. I hadabsolutely no place to go." You talk about your hollow points.

But one Sunday four months later he wandered into a littlechurch he'd heard about, the Greater Love Tabernacle in theRoxbury section of Boston. It was a place where the choir couldget a statue to dance, and the preacher could make you shiver,and the voltage in the air practically blew out the windows.Yeah, Fryar grew up next to a church--but a million miles frombeing a part of it. He remembered when he was seven and his daddragged him down to sing Call on God in front of the gospelband. That had scared him to death. He remembered staying in hisroom Sunday mornings when he was a teenager, and his mom wouldcome back from the church and tell him to turn that doggonemusic down; they can hear you at the service! "Church didn'tmean anything to me," he says. "Not when you'd see people actone way in church and another at home."

But this little church in Roxbury was different. For some reasonthis was a place Fryar wanted to step into. He wandered by thenext week, too, and he wound up buying the church an organ thatday. He wandered by the next Sunday, too, and gave the churchhimself.

It was just after a rocking sermon by the Reverend William E.Dickerson, himself a former angel-dust user, and just before thegospel choir broke into a floorboard shaker. In the ruckus of aspiritual 7.0 on the Richter scale, Dickerson called on sinnersto come to the altar and "give themselves to Jesus," and Fryarstrode up from the back of the church, tears in the corners ofhis eyes. "I knew," he says. "After the Hart Lee thing, I knewanything else I did was going to turn to mush. I had nowhereelse to go."

Dickerson yelled, "Father, in the name of Jesus, bless this manand totally deliver him from all ..." and just then he put hishand on Fryar's forehead, and it was as though Dickerson hadblindsided Fryar on a down-and-in thrown too high. Fryar's feetswung out from under him, and his head hit the linoleum, and hebegan speaking in tongues, spouting a kind of gibberish thatnobody, especially Fryar, had heard before. It lasted a full 30minutes, according to Dickerson, and finally Fryar got up offthe floor, shook the preacher's hand and changed his life.

Just like that, Fryar had somewhere to go, and he went thereconstantly. Passion is like a river. It has to go somewhere. Hestudied two years to get his Pentecostal minister's license, andhe was granted approval to preach to Baptists. Suddenly he was apreacher, and anything he'd ever put into a gang fight or a postpattern or a coke party, he doubled and put into his sermons. Hegot so worked up about them that his sweat ruined a suit a week.The dry cleaner said it was no use trying to save them. "I don'tknow if the altar is his end zone or what," says Hopewell'spastor, the Reverend Robert Stanley, "but he definitely istrying to get open."

"When I first heard he was going to be a minister," says formerPatriot Michael Timpson, now with the Bears, "I thought it wasjust another stage he was going through, one he'd forget aboutand leave behind. What was that, four years ago?"

The fans were out again, and the devout had crowbarredthemselves into the seats, each of them praying silently forredemption and glory, each of them a true believer.

When they saw Reverend Fryar, alone and in his colors, theirhearts rose and their voices sang. For the next 60 minutes Fryarburst and darted and jumped and spun, and the sweat poured fromhis brow, and he mopped it with the towel at his side. And whenthe delivery had come, as if from God Himself, as if out of theheavens, and he had scored, he stamped his feet and raised hishands to the Lord and craned his neck so far back that it seemedsure to snap.

That was only one of the seven touchdowns Irving Fryar scoredlast year as the keystone receiver of the Miami Dolphins.

Maybe heaven does come to those who wait. Just before Fryar madeit a decade in the NFHell, the Patriots traded him, in theoff-season of 1993, to the Dolphins for a second- and athird-round draft choice. Goodbye, Quarterback for a Day Club.Goodbye, Midget. Hello, Dan Marino. Hello, spirals.

It took exactly one practice for Fryar to figure out he'd beentraded to Eden. In New England, policy was that even if itbecame clear the moment the huddle broke that a pattern wasn'tgoing to work, you stuck with it. "Whatever you do, don'timprovise," the Patriots would say. "It'll just get us introuble." But in Miami that first day, receivers coach LarrySeiple said, "Just get open." And as Marino hit Fryar with apass when Fryar was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, angelssang and bugles blared. "That's when I knew," says Fryar.

He has had the best seasons of his career the last two years,both of them Pro Bowl seasons, which is saying something,considering they were his 10th and 11th years in the NFL. Mostreceivers, upon reaching their 11th year in the league, are notrunning routes at the Pro Bowl. They are running bingo games inBoynton Beach.

As for the Dolphins, they finally have someone to throw in withall those Dupers and Claytons in their record book. The preacheris not only the best-blocking receiver in the NFL, he is alsoMarino's favorite deep Fryar, and last year he caught morepasses (73) for more yards (1,270) than in any other season inhis life. "Not many 34-year-olds can run as fast as he can,"says Marino. "Plus, he's brought a good work ethic to the team.He's good for motivation, good for the young players to look upto." There's a sentence nobody in New England ever expected toread.

And get this: The Dolphins voted Fryar their most inspirationalplayer last season, and almost none of them have heard himpreach a word.

He is becoming one of the most popular sports gods in Miami, andmaybe that's why 300 kids showed up for one of his sermons. Noproblem. "They come for the autograph," Fryar says with a grin,"but they get Jesus." Then again, maybe they come to hear himpreach. Nobody beats him at Fryar and brimstone.

"Oh, yes!" Fryar will yell to his congregation, pounding on thepulpit. "I know that one day I was lost!" (Amen, Reverend! thecongregation will yell back.) "I was driving the bus straight tohell!" (Yes!) "And takin' a bunch of fools with me!" (Preach,Reverend!) "Football did not save me!" (No, sir!) "Football didnot give me peace!" (No, sir!) "Football did not give me joy!"(Nuh-uh!) "Football did not put love in my heart!" (That'sright!) "Football did not get me off of drugs!" (No, it didn't!)"Football did not stop me from drinking!" (Tell it!) "But youknow who did it?" (You know who!) "Jeeeeeeeeesus!''

And he will, almost anywhere he's asked. He'll also play thepiano and sing. So far he has thumped Bibles and ivories and theDevil in Philadelphia, Trenton (N.J.), Boston, Miami, Plano(Texas) and Lincoln and Scottsbluff (Neb.).

But his finest moment came the hot August day in 1994 that hegave a sermon for Set Free Drug Ministries. The crowd was filledwith guys who used to disappear for a couple of days at a time,with maybe a gun in a boot or a Betsy in the glove box. Fryarbellowed at them, and they rose and cheered, and when he wasdone and had them standing on the pews, the pastor invited thesinners and the eternally damned up to the altar to be saved.Two drug addicts rushed forward, and a third struggled up:Michael Robinson, frail and gaunt and, as Fryar remembers, "witha shadow of oldness upon him." Robinson had sat slumped over ina back pew at Hopewell, hope and well being the two words he wasnearly out of, until Fryar made his summons. Then somethinginside Robinson stirred.

That day Robinson made it to the altar, dedicated his life toJesus and joined the church. Two months later, blind and lyingin a hospital bed, he died of AIDS.

And yet his mother, Loretta, wept for joy. "I know my son is atpeace now," she says. "And I know I will see him soon, sittingin Heaven with the Lord. I praise God for Reverend Fryar. Thisall took place out of the message Reverend Fryar gave that day.He is anointed of God."

And that's how it came to be that a woman who had never seen afootball game in her life now watches the Dolphins every Sundaythat she can, in hopes of seeing number 80 on the field andthanking the Lord Almighty for second- and third-round draftpicks who could be sent somewhere vaguely north in exchange fora man who would save her only son.

Oh, and Adrianne is five now and growing every day, and thatheart must be pumping blood pretty well, because she has herfather's stubborn streak--he says she's "a regular Fryarcracker."Irving and Jacqui have another daughter, Taylor, 2, and twoboys--Londen, 9, and Irving Jr., 7--whom Irving won't let playfootball. "I don't want them to go through the crap I wentthrough," Irving says, bristling. Instead, he's always therewaiting for them when they're done with school and taking themto play baseball or go fishing.

It has been four years now without knives to block or forks inthe road or little spoons full of coke. Plus Irving and Jacquire-exchanged vows this past March (they had eloped 10 yearsearlier, and Irving had promised her a church wedding), andJacqui invited Irving's father down from Browns Mills, N.J., andnot only that, but he showed up. David Fryar will not die aloneafter all. At 65, still running that dry-cleaning business, heis the father of a three-year-old son, Irving's half-brother.The boy's name is David, and, his father says, "he and I willhave more time together than me and Irving did, I'm going tomake sure of that.''

There is a pause. "I still love my son," David says of Irving."If he wants to love me back, that's up to him."

Irving just might think about it. The Boss up there is big oncomebacks lately.

COLOR PHOTO:BILL FRAKES [Irving Fryar preaching to congregation]COLOR PHOTO:WALTER IOOSS JR. AFTER A SCORING CATCH AGAINST THE PATRIOTS LASTSEASON, FRYAR'S HALLELUJAH SHOWED HE HAD FOUNDFOOTBALL PARADISE IN MIAMI. [Irving Fryar catching pass for the Miami Dolphins]COLOR PHOTO:ROBERT ROGERS [see caption above--Irving Fryar on his knees in the endzone with outstretched arms]COLOR PHOTO:GLENN OSMUNDSON/PROVIDENCE JOURNAL-BULLETIN FRYAR'S YEARS OF TROUBLE INCLUDED AN ARREST ONGUN CHARGES, AN ALLEGED STABBING BY JACQUI AND A SUBSEQUENT RECONCILIATION. [Irving Fryar in court with policemen]B/W PHOTO:AP [see caption above--Irving Fryar showing injured finger]B/W PHOTO:WILLIAM POLO/BOSTON HERALD [see caption above--Irving Fryar kissing Jacqui Fryar]COLOR PHOTO:JOHN BIEVER PLAYING IN NEW ENGLAND WAS a BRUISING EXPERIENCEFOR FRYAR, WHO SAW STARS AS OFTEN AS HE SAW THE BALL. [Irving Fryar being hit by Buffalo defender]COLOR PHOTO:DAMIAN STROHMEYER [see caption above--Irving Fryar sitting on New England bench]COLOR PHOTO:BILL FRAKES IRVING'S CHILDREN (FROM LEFT)--ADRIANNE, IRVING JR., TAYLOR AND LONDEN--KNOW THEY CAN LEAN ON HIM NOW. [Irving, Adrianne, Irving Jr., Taylor and Londen Fryar]TWO COLOR PHOTOS:BILL FRAKES IRVING IS CLOSE TO HIS MOM (BELOW, WITH PORTRAIT OF HER GRANDFATHER), BUT NOT TO HIS FATHER (WITH ELIZA LITTLEAND THEIR SON DAVID). [Irving Fryar's mom, Allene, holding Bible; Irving Fryar's dad, David, with Eliza Little and their son David]COLOR PHOTO:BILL FRAKES THE BOY WHO EMULATED GANG LEADERS NOW LOOKS UP TOTHURGOOD MARSHALL AND MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.[Irving Fryar standing in front of portraits of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr.]